Trust
by malteasers
Summary: When Dean's memory is wiped clean and Sam is left helpless, all the brothers have left to rely on is a young monster. No slash. (This is my first fic, so reviews and the like would be much appreciated! :3)
1. Chapter 1

"It got away, Dad."

"Shut up and eat your burger."

Abby scowled and hunched over the diner table, pulling her trucker's cap low. A failed hunt never exactly succeeded in lightening her father's mood. Then again, not much did nowadays.

She looked out of the window. It was foggy, the moonlight reflecting off the bumpers in the parking lot the only thing even remotely visible through the mist. She ignored the cold finger that traced down her spine and turned her attention back to her food, but the nagging little voice in the back of her head could not be placated. Her eyes looked up across the table to her father from under the brim of her hat.

"It's still out there."

"I said shut up_._"

"You know what I love about you? Your sparkling personality."

He gave her a look that could possibly kill a small mammal. "Whaddaya want me to do now, huh? I saved your skin, it could've killed you. Try being grateful for once."

She snorted. "_Grateful? _Do you know how many more lives we just wasted? It was a grade A case! It's gonna find and demolish any other hunter it can find and then it's gonna hit the road. They're still out there, we could just get back out and-"

"My ass we could. I've got business to attend to. Besides, we can't stay in this town any longer, or something worse's gonna get our stink."

"Something worse?" Abby barked a laugh. "This can't _possibly _get worse. This is as bad as it gets, Dad."

"Yeah, well, 'as bad as it gets' is going to have to wait a while."

Abby massaged her temples, exasperated. Suddenly, her ear pricked up to voices to the far left of her, by the counter.

"Can I get a Meat Supreme, side of fries, extra onions?"

"Sure. And for you, sir?"

"I'll have a, uh, taco salad and an expresso. Thanks."

Abby froze, hands remaining unmoved from her temples to shield her face. Her dad raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

"Don't move." Her voice was barely above a whisper. She lowered her head and her father watched as her eyes followed something behind him, eyes diluting like a cat. He turned to match her gaze.

"I said _don't move._"

He gave her a sardonic look. "What is it?" he hissed, looking as if he was trying not to roll his eyes.

With a great deal of effort, she swallowed, and looked at the two men, hard.

"You know when I said things couldn't get any worse?" Abby said, trying her best to keep her voice from trembling. "I think they just did."

"Dude, I'm telling you, he was here."

"How do you know, Dean? We've been chasing the guy's tail for two weeks now with nothing to go on, and we've got nothing to show for it. I mean, we've got bigger fish to fry here. Maybe he'll come back."

Dean leaned over the table and looked his brother in the eye, watching his mild discomfort. "I know Cas better than anyone," he said with conviction, "And if I know anything I know that if we want any chance of talking to him we need to hunt the bastard down first."

"Talk to him about what? You told me he was protecting the tablet from _you. _What makes you think that he'll hand it over?"

"If I could just get through to him I-"

"Dean." Sam's eyes were pitiful, his brows furrowed in a way that made Dean feel a small stab of annoyance. He didn't want his sympathy. He didn't want sympathy, period.

"The angels screwed with his head pretty bad, and after all that crap with Purgatory and the mental hospital and the Leviathan, I… I don't think his mind can take much more of it."

"What are you trying to say?" Dean was bristling now, despite himself. He wasn't even sure why anymore –he had betrayed them, fought them, broke Sam's friggin' _sanity _– why did he still trust him?

"I just don't think we can trust him anymore," Sam said as if he had read Dean's mind, his palms upturned. "He's-"

"He's what? A time bomb? A loose cannon?" Dean spat. "'Cause yeah, sure, he is, but you know what else he is? He's _family._" He spoke the word with reverence, as if he were speaking in a church, but Sam only rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, nobody gets left behind, I get it. I do. I just think we should focus on the bigger picture here."

Dean threw his burger down in disgust (a rare feat) and got up, straightening himself out. "I'll meet you back at the motel, we're leaving in the morning."

"Dean, don't be a baby." Sam was starting to get pissed. He grabbed his brother's jacket as he passed him and yanked his arm so that Dean was looking down at him, a sour look on his face. "Look, I'm not saying that Cas isn't important, but he's not exactly our top priority right-" suddenly, he froze, his eyes narrowing at something over Dean's shoulder.

"What?" he said petulantly. But Sam just flapped his hand at him to shut up, watching intently as a man with greying hair and hiking boots and a teenage girl with a Red Sox cap pulled over her eyes stood and left the diner, a little too hastily for his liking. His eyes widened. Was that..?

Dean watched as Sam shelled out a couple of dollars, tossing the notes on the table before rising and following the two out the door. Dithering for a bit between him and his previous annoyance, Dean swallowed his pride and went hurriedly in Sam's direction.

As he caught up, Sam motioned for Dean to get his gun out. "Dude, what the hell?" he hissed. "What are you doing?"

"Just follow my lead," his brother said quietly, as he followed his marks into the fog.

Abby scurried at her father's heels as they headed down the street left of the diner, trying to match his brisk pace as he compelled her to keep up. The hairs on her arms stood up as she sensed them behind her, a couple of yards back. Even so, they felt so close it was like they were breathing down her neck. "Dad, they're the Winchesters," she choked, trying to hold back inane tears. "They're looking for the angel. There's no way out of this."

"You hush up, now, there's always a way," her father told her earnestly, with a surprising amount of compassion – well, for her father – before without warning dragging her into an alleyway partly hidden by the dark and the mist, and running down it and around the corner. Doing all her best not to yelp, Abby followed, running on the balls of her feet so her steps wouldn't resonate out onto the main street.

After about ten minutes they stopped, and leaned against the wall to catch their breath.

"You think we lost 'em?" Abby turned to her father, panting.

"I would say so."

She looked around, trying to discern any figures hidden in the shadows, straining her senses, but saw nothing. They were alone. She exhaled, watching her breath turn to white smoke before dissipating into the fog. A sudden anxiousness took her in the unnatural stillness of the alley.

"We need to get back to the motel. We've gotta leave, now."

"So what are we looking at?" Dean breathed, glancing at his brother as they walked along the street, guns up.

"If I'm right, a Viti."

"A veetee?"

"Yeah, V-I-T-I. Bobby told me about them once, they're a type of vampire, but get this, instead of feeding on blood, they feed on human energy."

"Define 'energy'."

"Like, uh, thoughts, emotions. Sometimes even a life force, but that's only a last resort. It's too strong a source; if they intake too much, they could burn up."

"Alright, how do we kill it?"

Sam grimaced. "I don't know. Same way as a normal vamp, I guess. Oh, and there was something about their eyes-"

"What?"

"He wasn't entirely clear on that part. He kinda zoned out for a bit. Besides, he said they were extinct. I didn't think I'd ever have to kill one."

He stopped, peering into a darkened alleyway to their left, head tilted. Just as the anticipated silence was starting to make Dean uncomfortable, he turned back round and started to jog down the street again, motioning with his gun.

"This way."

"Alright, Abby," he said at the door to the motel room at the side of the building, sparing her a quick glance as he reloaded and thumbed back the hammer on his gun, "I'll empty the room. I'll be five minutes. You stay out here and keep watch."

Abby put the barrel of her own pistol to her head in a salute, and stood to attention by the doorway, staring out into the night. It wasn't five minutes before she felt the cold steel of a knife digging into the side of her throat and a voice in her ear, startlingly loud in contrast to the deadened lull in the atmosphere.

"Abby. That's a pretty name."


	2. Chapter 2

Abby tensed and gripped at her pistol with two sets of white knuckles, but didn't move, only cast her eyes down at her feet. They were good, she had to admit that. Didn't even hear their footsteps.

The voice paused for a moment, as if it were choosing its words carefully. "Hey, Abby," it said, slowly, "you see any angels around here lately? Black hair, blue tie, trenchcoat?"

"Dean," said a second voice, apparently silent until now, "come on. Just kill it and-"

"Why else do you think we're here?" Abby's voice rang out suddenly, shaking with rage and fear. "In friggin' _Sedona_. If I spend one more day in this goddamn town I'm gonna start puking healing crystals."

The voices seemed to falter for a moment, so she carried on, aware that the sound of her father packing could no longer be heard through the open door.

"That asshat has been hunting us down for a week now," she continued, trying her best to sound derisive, the whole laugh-in-the-face-of-death thing that seemed to work out so well for the pair of them. "Us and all of our kin. He's already killed two of our cousins this month, so we figured we'd enforce a little social justice ourselves."

"You were _hunting _Cas?" the voice that belonged to Dean was riddled with animosity. "You were trying to kill an angel? _You?_"

Abby stuttered a laugh, as if he had asked a stupid question. "We wouldn't have needed to." She adjusted her cap so that it shadowed her eyes and slowly turned her neck to the source of the voices, slightly surprised as she felt the knife ease a little as she did.

_Jesus. _

She remembered when she was young, just a child, before she reached the Ageless Period, her mother would tuck her into bed in their council flat in Georgia, and tell her stories. Stories about vicious monsters who were born in destruction and would die in destruction, who mutilated everything in their path first and asked questions later.

"Be good," her mother used to tell her. "Cover up your tracks, and don't stay in one place for more than two weeks at a time. Or the Winchesters will find you. "

And there they were. The monsters that kept the little ones up at night. The stuff of nightmares, with a couple of .44 Magnums and some serious unresolved childhood issues. They didn't really look like the fear-inducing type– two plaid-wearing pretty boys in serious need of a haircut – but they sure as hell were.

"Alright, what's that supposed to-"

Abby felt like crying with relief as she heard her father stepping out onto the sidewalk, gun poised, a guttural sound in the back of his throat.

"Get that glorified toothpick away from my daughter."

There wasn't even a second in between the form of her father's words and the monster that must've been Dean pouncing on him, dragging the knife away from Abby's throat as he did so and dragging out a line of blood in its place.

Sam stood behind her, gun out and alternating between her and her father, who was currently pinned to the ground with Dean straddling him and holding a knife to his throat, in case either made a sudden movement.

Dean glared down, his nose mere inches away from the guy's face. He saw what had triggered Sam – as he got pinned, the Viti's pupils diluted, practically took up the whole of the eye, like a demon, save for the startling ring of blue around the edges, the two bleeding into each other like watercolours. He smiled up at his captor. No fangs, but the face wasn't exactly one of chastity either way, not in Dean's eyes.

Eyes…

"What did we do to deserve this?" Abby shouted over to the hunter, fists clenched, but still not daring to move from where she stood. "We never hurt anybody!" she was getting scared now, really scared; unless she could get through that thick skull of his, there would be no chance of survival. Right now, persuasion was her only advantage. "We just wanted the killing to stop. We just wanted to-"

The hunter had made no acknowledgement to her words, but was staring intently into her father's eyes, soundless, motionless. And then as he started to sway on his hands and knees she realised what was happening.

"Dad, no! _No!" _

And suddenly Sam was there, tearing Dean away from his captive and letting him slump, lifeless, onto the road. He kicked the vamp in the head when he tried to haul himself up, ignoring the screams of the little girl, and pointed the gun straight at his eye on a hunch.

Stone cold dead, one second flat.

Abby felt strangely unattached, as if she were sitting on the road across from her body and watching somebody else control it. She was screaming, she knew that much, though she knew not what. The hunter that had not yet been incapacitated turned his gun on her with a steady hand but she was too far gone to care. She didn't care if she hurt someone. She didn't care if she killed someone.

Without knowing what she was doing, she thrust out a hand towards the hunter, and feeling a white-hot volt of energy burn through it. Without warning, the hunter flew backwards through the air with a panicked grunt, shortly airborne before slamming against the building opposite the motel. He crumpled onto the tarmac and did not move again.

Abby took in the three men, sprawled senseless across the breadth of the overcast street, and sank to her knees, hugging herself and shivering violently.

It was a funny feeling, having all the memories forcibly ripped from your head.

Dean fought so hard to keep those creepy-ass eyes out of his head. The Viti could feel it, too, feel his mind screaming and thrashing and pushing through all limits of exertion to keep itself intact. But nothing could tear Dean's gaze away from the gaping void of the vamp's pupils. He felt his own eyes widen in response, straining, badly wanting to blink but physically incapable to, and after what seemed like years but must have been the smallest fraction of time, things began to unravel. At first it was uncanny, watching the small details fade from his mind. The brand of his favourite hair gel. Sammy's birthdate. His first baseball tournament.

But soon enough he felt a strange sensation of bliss as he felt his mind slowly slip away, like smoke, like water down a stream. Most of his memories he was glad to see go. Hell? Purgatory? Watching his brother die-

_No, _he told himself, _I won't have to think about that anymore. About anything. I won't have to think about… _

And when the darkness finally took him, he surrendered willingly.


	3. Chapter 3

When Sam woke up, he was lying in a dingy motel room, and dawn was just beginning to crack the sky open. He groaned and drove the heels of his hands into his eyes. When he blinked the dark spots out of his vision the rest of the room came into focus. There lay Dean, still unconscious, on the opposite bed, and sitting watching him, faced away from Sam, was the Viti from the night before.

Sam half fell out of bed and scrabbled in his jeans for his gun.

"Get away from him!"

The girl didn't turn. Her voice was low, and resigned.

"Dean's stable. He's dreaming."

"You get away from him or I swear to god-"

"I hid your gun. Sorry, but I didn't want to take any chances."

Sam took his hands away from the insides of his pockets and threw them in the air, exasperated. "What are you still doing here? Why didn't you escape while you had the chance?"

The girl's head bowed, and her words were broken, barely louder than a whisper. "I don't know."

He stopped short, tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. "Are – are you crying?"

The girl sniffed, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "Yeah, I'm crying."

"…Why?"

The girl spun round in her chair and glared up at Sam where he stood, her eyes shining with fire and tears and pain. Her eyelashes stuck together and her hair was in rattails. "My dad just died. You _killed _him. Why wouldn't I cry?"

"I, uh…" Sam was genuinely at a loss for words, his face looking caught somewhere between confusion and mild panic. He didn't know that monsters _could _cry.

"I'm not a monster," the girl muttered, casting her eyes down, looking as if she wanted to say more but wasn't sure how to. She almost smiled when she looked up again to see Sam's expression of strangled fear before it was hastily suppressed.

"I'm a creature of the mind, remember?" she said, tapping the side of her head. "I can see all kinds of crap. Including the inside of your head." It almost looked like a shudder passed through her at that last comment. Must've been his imagination.

He decided to use a different tactic. "What's your name again?"

"Abby."

"Hi, Abby. Could you tell me what, uh-" he gestured to Dean's slack expression and motionless body; "- what's wrong with my brother?" he flashed her a brief, panicked smile, glancing back at her before returning his gaze to Dean's comatose state.

"He was the subject of a feed," Abby said, sobering up from the tense moment and turning her attention back to the hunter. "It was only brief, nothing that could kill him, but-"

"But what?"

"There will-" she said, pausing and changing tack when she saw the expression on the Winchester's face; "-may be some complications."

"Like what?"

Before Abby could respond, there were the sounds of a stirring and they both watched as the eyes of Dean Winchester slid open.

Sam broke out into a relieved smile, forgot the entire conversation he was currently in the middle of, and he rushed past Abby to kneel by his brother's side.

"How're you feeling?"

Dean's eyes, once they had time to focus, were disoriented and filled with apprehension. Before anyone had time to react he was standing upright, and a loaded gun (amongst other things, a pang of annoyance went through Sam – right, so she took _his _gun but neglected to remember Dean's?) in his hands.

"Alright," he barked, his voice as commanding as it had ever been but with an unsure, undoubtedly _frightened _undertone, the likes of which Sam had never heard before. "Who the hell are you people?"

Abby winced at the expression on Sam's face. Confusion, like it was taking a while for his brain to process the words.

"Dean, it's me."

"Yeah, and who the hell's 'me'? Where the hell am I?"

"Dean." Abby's voice was calm, and fixed in a tone Sam hadn't heard from her before, like she knew what she was doing. "What do you remember?"

"What do I remember, what's that supposed t- _oh god-"_

Sam rushed to his brother's aid as he fell to his knees, groaning and clutching his head. He blinked and shook his head, trying to clear his vision as he shrugged the arms off of his shoulder.

"Hey hey hey, talk to me!"

"Get off of me! I'm fine."

"Don't think about it too much, it'll only make things worse." Abby kneeled in front of the two where they sat and put a hand to Dean's forehead. "Mental analysis," she explained to Sam.

"Can anybody else hear that? What's that noise?" Dean pivoted his head left and right, provoking a soft _keep still _from Abby as a look of deep concentration came over her.

After a couple of seconds she stood and straightened herself out, but when she turned to Sam her expression was grim.

"The thing about… _us, _is that when we feed, we tend to go for the good stuff first, like a survival instinct."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning when Dean got fed off-" Sam couldn't help but notice that Abby was trying to avoid directly acknowledging her father, "-he got the good stuff taken first. The stuff he would never in a million years forget; his family, the licence plate to his car, his time… downstairs. He remembers what he was taught, like his two times tables and how to handle a gun or whatever, he just doesn't remember who taught it to him. He's kind of non-existent to himself – he's not really self aware in the fact that he's got a name, what he looks like, where he came from. He just _is._"

"Can you fix it?" 

Abby's eyebrows furrowed, as if she were in conflict with herself. She bit her lip.

"_Abby._" The tone in Sam's voice stirred a feeling of pure loathing, right in the pit of Abby's stomach. Such a demanding, _arrogant _tone, as if he wouldn't understand why someone would risk so much for a man that means nothing to them. She raised her chin, indignant. She could prove to Sam that she wasn't a monster.

"We kill the Alpha." Abby's face was a perfect mask, letting no insight to her thoughts leak through. "The energy that was taken from Dean was a source of matter, and matter can't be destroyed, right? Only transferred. When a Viti dies, any energy that it was still holding onto is transferred to the Alpha, kind of like a vulture. And if we kill the Alpha, the energy will be transferred – hopefully – back to Dean."

"And where's the Alpha?"

Abby frowned slightly. "I don't know. But I can find out."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "Well, let's do that then!"

"To find the Alpha will take me a matter of days, and even then only the general location. There will be no telling when or where he'll move next. And-"

"And what?"

"Well, to use that kind of amount of power… It will weaken me."

Sam took a step closer to Abby, his cautiousness forgotten amidst the desperation that was starting to consume him. "He's my brother. We have to try."

Dean, who was currently still kneeling on the floor where he collapsed, frowned slightly, trying to catch a memory that seemed to keep eluding him.

Abby took a deep breath, and inclined her head. "I'd best get started, then."

Sam only nodded and turned away.


End file.
